Category: Yoani Sanchez

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 30 October 2023 — I met her in Madrid almost ten years ago. Hyperactive and direct, María Corina Machado was at that time one of the many figures of the Venezuelan opposition who were trying to insert themselves into the political scene after the death of Hugo Chávez. From that time until today, her country fell into the abyss of chronic crises and my Island contributed to that fall by sucking thousands of barrels of crude oil from Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), which propped up the Cuban regime.

In that decade, Machado went through everything: the hard times and the bad times, never better said than when her main opponent, Nicolás Maduro, systematically cut off all avenues for an electoral and peaceful solution to his unpopular mandate. Surveillance, the assassination of her reputation, internal struggles between the opponents themselves, and much more, has been experienced by this woman who, last weekend, was chosen to face the heir of Chavismo at the polls. Her chances of being reinstated for the elections and competing for the presidency, with guarantees and security, are minimal, but hopeful.

All of us who were born under authoritarian political models know that no dictatorship is willing to risk its continuity at the polls

All of us who were born under authoritarian political models know that no dictatorship is willing to risk its continuity at the polls. If one thing is a part of the catechism that tyrants learn very early, it is that they should never allow dissidence or a ballot to distance them from the honey of power. History has excellent examples of resounding failures when a vain autocrat believed that he could subject his permanence in the presidential chair to elections, and ended up losing. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 26 October 2023 — Cachita, the sea is beautiful, and the wind arrives somewhat autumnal this October in Havana. Dressed in yellow, the doll that represents the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, remained this Thursday on the marble of a bench in the Parque de La Fraternidad, a few meters from the Capitol in Havana. The downward gaze, the necklaces hanging from her neck and the knotted scarf on her head complete the peculiar scene. But the image is not alone.

You can show the doll and promise a client that ‘a trip is in the offing’

A few meters away, absorbed in the hustle and bustle of survival, the owner of this representation, also of the orisha Oshún, haggles over the price of a peanut nougat with a passing merchant. She, who sells her services as a fortune teller, card reader and prophet, encounters everyday uncertainty in Cuba. She can show the doll and tell a client that “a trip is in the offing,” but she admits she is incapable of predicting the price of a dollar on the black market or deciphering the vagaries of the Havana oil refinery.

The prophets of doom live in difficult times on this Island. They focus on the uncertain future or answer the current questions of their clients. Tomorrow doesn’t matter where now is so urgent. So a doll representing Cachita remains dressed and made up on a park bench, while the owner of the image immerses herself in a world where prayers, cascarilla and rosaries can do little to help her.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 19 October 2023 — A few days apart, two pieces of news showed the most hopeful and the most disappointing side of the United Nations (UN). At the beginning of October, the Security Council of this international organization approved sending more than a thousand police officers to Haiti, under the direction of Kenya. The arrival of these uniformed officers seeks to stop the spiral of insecurity and violence that has overwhelmed that Caribbean country. Many Haitians hope that the mission will make the armed gangs that control large territories lose ground, although the shadow of doubt already hangs over the effectiveness and moral integrity of the Kenyan police.

Beyond the controversy surrounding the mission in Haiti, there seems to be a consensus on the urgency of taking action. However, that same UN that feeds the expectations of improvement in more than 11 million people has, this same month, once again disappointed another part of the planet’s inhabitants after the results of the votes to join the Human Rights Council. The presence among its members of regimes that openly prey on civil and political liberties, such as China and Cuba, is a bucket of cold water thrown in the faces of activists, human rights defenders and organizations that have reported the repressive excesses committed in both countries.

The UN, which sows confidence that international organizations can save lives and guide nations on the verge of social disintegration, stands as its own nemesis by leaving the impression of being more of a conclave in which dark interests and authoritarian lobbies prevail as they please. In its spacious halls, both Beijing and Havana show great ability to pull the strings of economic and diplomatic blackmail, at their convenience. If one does it, for the most part, based on economic pressures – made possible thanks to China’s extensive investment network on several continents – the other uses its medical missions and ideological camaraderie to gain support. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 10 October 2023 — His entire life has passed between two Cuban territories: the current province of Artemisa and the city of Havana. But this October Heberto, his wife and his little daughter will make the leap to another geography. The family will embark on a migratory route that will take them from Brazil to the southern border of the United States. “This is what we have resolved,” he says, hardly giving importance to the thousands of kilometers that separate the point of entry to South America and the final goal.

“We needed a large suitcase and a small one,” he says. “With the big one we are going to leave with our daughter’s things packed, but it’s possible that along the way we will have to commit to just the little one because we will have to cross complicated areas.” A seller of cheese, guava pods and yogurt, Heberto has been traveling for years from his native Alquízar to the area around the train terminal on Tulipán Street to offer his products. In that same area he closed a deal this week: a large suitcase for a sheep.

“A former customer had the suitcase and needed the meat, so in a few minutes we settled it,” he details. “Then he told me that if I got him a large, well-cured cheese, he could also give me in exchange one of those carry-on bags that go in the cabin of the plane.” One gains food at a time of inflation and rising costs of basic products, the other gets a good pair of solid suitcases  — plus “with wheels” — that will help him in his efforts to emigrate. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 September 2023 —  “From a clove of garlic,” says the poster that has been placed on the ground floor of our building in Havana to call for donations of resources for the celebration of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). The parapolice organization, which is experiencing its lowest moments, plans to celebrate its 63rd anniversary in the midst of a deep crisis that especially affects access to the most basic foods. The commemoration of its birth also comes accompanied by its tenth congress, which will be held starting this Wednesday despite the red numbers of the Cuban economy.

While measures are dictated to shorten working hours, disconnect refrigerators and air conditioning devices during certain hours of the day, the CDR spares no resources to bring together its managers, show off its political muscle and celebrate birthdays and a congress in the same week. It would be very annoying if it weren’t for the fact that the organization that was created to monitor and control Cubans at the neighborhood level does not enjoy any popularity these days and few give it even a thought. Like an unburied corpse, it stumbles around waiting for the last shovelfuls of dirt to be thrown on it from above.

Aware of the death of the once giant of family and domestic espionage, many of its former defenders have slowly withdrawn from the responsibilities at the head of the CDR. Those who a few years ago, in our building, knocked on our door with enthusiasm asking for some yuccas, some malangas or some onions for the watered-down soup – renamed “caldosa” [stew] in the official language – no longer even appear. They have their own personal dramas to endure and they know that the CDR will not be there to help them stretch their pension, convince vendors to lower the price of their food or arrange medications for them.

However, in my house we are going to offer more than a clove of garlic for the occasion. We are willing to get rid of a complete head that will stave off an organization that has only brought division and fear to the lives of Cubans. Like a vampire thirsty for other people’s intimacy and that feeds on anyone who has ideas of their own, we are going to hang a complete string on the door… to scare it away.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 12 August 2023 – Huge, refrigerated and with seals that reveal its journey through the seas of the world, this is the container that has arrived in our Havana neighborhood. The elongated mass has become, in a few days, the center of rumors, hopes and criticism. “It belongs to a small private business owner who brought it to sell frozen chicken,” a neighbor tells me. “It will also offer sausages, soft drinks and beers,” says a pensioner who lives right across from the container. “I’m sure it will put prices through the roof,” speculates another old woman.

In an area with numerous buildings of more than 12 floors and few supermarkets, the Seaco brand container has been placed on the sidewalk a few yards from the Factor y Final Immigration and Alien Office, a place feared for having a jail for foreigners and a processing center for deportees. “You have to have a lot of courage to put something like this in the face of ‘these people’,” says one of the young men who spends most of his days on the bench in a nearby park. “It has to be a someone with pull, an ex-military man,” he concludes.

In a short time, all kinds of legends have been woven around the deposit. What is being said shows much of the apprehensions and hopes of Cubans with micro, small and medium-sized companies [MSMEs], authorized just a couple of years ago. There are those who believe that when the box’s doors open, they will no longer have to travel to Centro Habana or El Vedado to buy a package of frozen chicken. “It will be expensive but at least it will be close,” a former microbrigadista [micro-brigade member] who helped build our concrete block tells me with relief.

The container has also increased the animosity. Its gleaming appearance stands very close to the rationed market’s butcher shop, whose refrigeration broke years ago and whose supplies are dwindling, with its long line of people with long faces and poor wages. “Retirees won’t be able to buy there,” concludes a woman who tries to survive exclusively on her pension of 1,400 pesos a month. Without relatives abroad or illegal businesses, the woman has no chance of paying an MSME more than 1,200 CUP for a kilogram of milk. continue reading

Although there are places in the area that once functioned as stores that took payment in convertible pesos and, previously, as markets for products that arrived from Eastern Europe during the days of Soviet subsidy, no one puts their hopes in these shops anymore. People know that now the most dynamic sale and the one with the greatest variety on offer is the one that is done in a corner, on the sidewalk, in an improvised kiosk or from the truck itself. The Cuban economy has come to center on these containers.

“I am selling a container of vegetable oil,” “Place your orders now fpr the container that will arrive in the second half of August,” “We offer a professional transfer service for your container to any part of Havana,” “No retail, purchase the full container or there is no deal,” are phrases that are read on Facebook groups, on classified ad sites and on WhatsApp lists where imported goods are promoted. The store experience: grabbing the cart, strolling through the shelves and choosing the product has become superfluous. Goods are bought blind, most of the time in closed boxes that list the weight on the outside, with some phrases in another language and a haughty rooster drawn on them. “You have to buy the whole box of chicken quarters,” an Internet user who inquires about the amounts is told.

Also, more and more frequently, purchases are made in foreign currency. “We are MSMEs with home service. Order through the website. Payment in dollars, euros and MLC (freely convertible currency). Your family can make the payment from abroad by Zelle, transfer or Bizum,” reads the advertisement of a business with a catalog that ranges from juices, through alcoholic beverages, to LED light bulbs. In the main premises, a dozen neat containers store the merchandise that has just arrived from the Port of Mariel. “Everything of quality and brought from abroad,” the merchant boasts.

If you were able to photograph Havana from above and put a red mark on each container that serves as a ‘vending machine’, the city would appear to have developed chickenpox. A rash of improvised businesses that, wherever they are placed, set off that popular fever that mixes discomfort and hope. “Did they already put a container in your neighborhood?” a friend I haven’t seen in a while greets me. “In mine there are about four,” he tells me without waiting for an answer. “Now people are no longer aware of when the rice arrives at the bodega, but when the ship with the next container comes.”

The dreams of millions on this Island now have a rectangular shape, a metallic surface, and they weigh, they weigh a lot.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

14ymedio, Generation Y, Havana, 5 August 2023 — Some were in rags, others wore masks. Some were screaming to get on a boat in Havana Bay and emigrate, others took to the streets throughout the entire island to try to change the country so as not to have to head somewhere else. In the 27 years that elapsed between the popular protest of the Maleconazo, on 5 August 1994, and the massive demonstrations of 11 July 2021 (11J), Cubans went from civic childhood to maturity. One only has to review the images of both moments to notice the tremendous change that took place in our society.

While on that morning in August the trigger was the cancellation of the trips on the Regla ferry and the impulse was given by the desire to escape the country, on 11J the cry of the streets was clearly libertarian, anti-government and socially fed up with the political and economic model imposed six decades ago. Better structured, with more consensual slogans and a democratic spirit, the protesters of two years ago were also the children and grandchildren of those who previously taken to the Malecón avenue and were beaten by the Rapid Response Brigades and by the builders of the Blas Roca contingent.

Dispersed, without leadership and overwhelmed by hunger, those who led that initial social explosion were undoubtedly more than brave. It was the first public revolt against the Cuban regime in a long time and it seemed that the indoctrination machinery and the political police had already managed to eradicate all civility from the people on this Island. It was a revolt of despair, chaotic and doomed to failure due to its lack of of organization and the mousetrap that the coastline became when the shock troops advanced on the crowd. They couldn’t do better. They didn’t know how to do better.

Despite the many differences, several common threads unite both moments. Repression was the response in both cases. While in that distant summer the oppressors disguised themselves in civilian clothes, on 11J they left modesty aside and went out to beat and arrest with all their paraphernalia of uniforms, shields and weapons. While in that cry in the middle of the Special Period it was Fidel Castro who led the crushing of citizen discontent, and only approached the Malecón when they had already managed to control the situation; In 2021, that disgraceful role fell to Miguel Díaz-Canel, who gave the “combat order” from an office and behind a desk, and unleashed the hunt for the protesters. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 29 July 2023 –The days have passed since the voters went to the polls on July 23 in the elections for the General Courts of Spain. However, the fact that the negotiations to reach a majority to govern will continue for several weeks is keeping millions of citizens on edge on this side of the Atlantic as well. The Popular Party won, but insufficiently, and it is most likely the Socialist Party will retain power. In any case, the Iberian country, now holding the rotating presidency of the European Union and with strong ties to Latin America, is committed to a more active position with our hemisphere, but its internal fractures hinder that role.

The recent summit of the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), held this month in Brussels, showed that Madrid is unable to concentrate on structuring a solid and long-term strategy for Latin American countries. With a common past and a community of Spanish citizens that is growing every day in this part of the world, thanks to the Democratic Memory Law, popularly known as the new Grandchildren Law*, the European nation should play a much more active diplomatic, economic and political role in the region. However, its internal partisan fights prevent it from realizing, in all its dimensions, the importance of paying attention to what was formerly called the New World.

Faced with a presidency in the Moncloa Palace that is weak in the Latin American arena, regional authoritarianisms are gaining a voice on international stages. The EU-Celac Summit made it clear that Spanish firmness or lukewarmness is decisive for the confluence between the 27 European countries and the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries. When Madrid is immersed in its own affairs and fails to realize the importance of its leadership beyond the seas, all of old Europe resents its links with this continent. Spain is key, and the grudges of the past — from colonialism to slavery — should not dissuade it from its leadership in America. If it does not assume that role,  China and Russia are eager to dispute it and area gaining ground. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, 1 August 2023

Access to the internet barely functions.

The ATMs are almost out of cash.

The Electric Union announces an increase in blackouts.

It is better not to go near the hospitals because there are no serums for hydration.

Bus stops have become places for long waits.

There are neighborhoods where garbage has not been collected from the streets for weeks.

Thousands of residents in this city have not received water through their pipes for more than a month.

One cannot go out on the street after certain hours because between the lack of public lighting and crime, there is no safe place.

The Cuban peso is worth less and less and food costs more and more.

Those who did not plan to emigrate are already beginning to pack their bags. Our building is getting emptier and emptier. Even the seasoned militants of the Communist Party and the most frenzied members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution have headed north.

The political prisoners are still behind bars and the alleged negotiations for their release are in the realm of speculation.

Independent journalism is left, every day, with fewer reporters on the street on the Island.

Activism is undermined by exile and repression.

The leaders of the Communist Party have less and less shame and demand “creative resistance,” where the people must put up the resistance while they continue “creating” large profits for their pockets and those of their family clans.

Fear spreads but anger too.

August, our cruelest month, starts hot, hot, hot.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 24 July 2023

I am concerned that not enough emphasis is being given in the national media to warn of the dangers of these high temperatures.

I am concerned that there isn’t a place in the whole city where you can get a free glass of water.

I am concerned that there are hardly any working water fountains left in Havana.

I am concerned that having a fan on for a few hours each day is a luxury that many families cannot afford.

I am concerned that sun creams are only sold in hard currency.

I am concerned that there are hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have not received water through their pipes for weeks.

I am concerned that bottled water is often more expensive than beer.

I am concerned about all the bedridden people who, with these temperatures, do not have access to disposable diapers, wet towels, or an air conditioner.

I am concerned that having an iced drink on the street will become too much for the pocketbook.

I am concerned that in hospitals families have to bring a fan to cool the patient.

I am concerned that those who work from dawn to dusk are not issued hats, long-sleeved shirts and other supplies to protect them from the sun.

I am concerned about so many felled trees in the Cuban capital, so many squares without any shadows.

I am concerned  that we believe that we are used to the heat, that the tropics run through our veins, and we do not see the dangers of the high temperatures that we are experiencing.

I am concerned that so many people may be dying as a result of the excesses of the weather and we do not know it.

I am concerned that while the heatwave makes daily life in Cuba more difficult, some gentlemen in guayaberas — without a drop of sweat — dedicate themselves to spreading slogans from their air-conditioned rooms, calling for “creative resistance” with a mojito in hand, and under the umbrellas by their pools, demand that we give up every last drop of our efforts.

I am concerned.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 22 July 2023 — A few days after standing in a very long line, I had to walk through the streets of the San Leopoldo neighborhood in Havana, avoiding the bodies of dead chicks, thrown from the balconies, with their necks outstretched and their feathers still a tender yellow color. I had spent a whole morning in line to buy those tiny beings who, according to the official discourse, were going to save us from famine.

Only one of those chicks survived two weeks in our house. He died malnourished and sick, due to our inexperience as poultry farmers and the lack of food to give him. We couldn’t take a bite of that starving, gray creature, perhaps because it had ended up looking too much like us. Three decades later, the nightmare repeats itself, but this time with the breeding of fish.

Cuba’s unpopular Vice Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia has summoned us, speaking before the National Assembly of People’s Power, to create ponds in our backyards and dedicate ourselves to aquaculture. I am not going to dwell on the authoritarian and despotic tone with which he has launched his demand, because it is the typical way in which the bureaucrats of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) speak to us, as if they were addressing soldiers and not citizens, as if the country were an immense barracks and we were Compulsory Military Service recruits.

Tapia, who has left the worst of reputations – for being inefficient, corrupt and oppressive – wherever they have placed him as leader of the PCC, has not the slightest idea of ​​what he is ordering us to do. According to his explanation, in a few square meters we could create the pond that will take us out of the crisis and make our kitchens overflow with fish and our plates with fins. In a country with a serious problem of housing overcrowding, thinking that families can have space for something like this exceeds naivety to become evil. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 21 July 2023 — Neivy responds reluctantly. It is probably the umpteenth call that she has taken this Friday from the customer service desk of the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA). Faced with a client’s complaint about the lousy internet connection, the employee limits herself to repeating: “We have instability in the service.” Seconds later she hangs up the phone even though the conversation isn’t over.

The state monopoly Etecsa continues to make enemies. One of the most unpopular state companies in Cuba, comparable only in rejection to the Unión Eléctrica, it charges for a service that it barely offers. Access to the web through cellphones has become an ordeal for customers, captives in a market that does not allow competition with other companies.

“Thank you for everything, Etecsa,” user Adalberto Orta Pozo commented sarcastically this morning on Twitter. Next to his words was an image with a “FAST” icon, showing that his internet speed was just 340 kilobits per second (Kbps). At that speed, the ability of this Cuban to comfortably navigate the great world web, upload photos and videos or interact with others on social networks, is almost nil.

His publication attracted comments from dozens of ETECSA customer. Some took the opportunity to carry out the speed test and the numbers in various parts of the Island were even worse. In the newsroom of 14ymedio, at the stroke of noon, it was barely possible to connect at 160 Kbps. At that rate, Facebook pages do not load, it is impossible to watch videos online and readers are annoyed because the responses to their messages arrive late or never arrive at all.

Hay "inestabilidad en el servicio" de acceso a #internet, es lo que responde la empleada de @ETECSA_Cuba en esta llamada que hice al servicio de atención al cliente del monopolio estatal de telecomunicaciones. Para colmo me colgó antes de terminar la conversación… #Cuba pic.twitter.com/BBkg7mghSy

— Yoani Sánchez 🇨🇺 (@yoanisanchez) July 21, 2023

At 3:22 p.m., the connection was a barely perceptible pulse of 51 Kbps at the headquarters of this newspaper. If this data is taken as an indicator of life, it would be necessary to conclude that the Internet is dying or almost dead in Cuba.

In addition, all these problems are happening seven months after the Arimao fiber optic submarine cable was connected between the port of Cienfuegos and the French island of Martinique. By April of this year, the first tests of its operation had already begun, but since then no senior official has publicly offered the activation schedule for the new connection. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 20 July 2023 — They breakdown the data. All negative. The sugar harvest plunges, food production declines and money to import basic products is scarce. Right now, in Cuba’s National Assembly in the Palace of Conventions in Havana, standing in all its immensity between the seats and the raised hands of the parliamentarians, is the elephant of the urgency of a change in the system. Everyone feels its presence and prominence, but no one dares to mention it.

Instead of the courageous gesture of acknowledging that the country took the wrong course six decades ago and that imposing a centralized model led us to the abyss we are now in, the delegates continue to insist on recommending measures, adjustments and more controls to get out of the crisis. But with each intervention and each new figure announced, the X-ray of that terminal patient that is the Cuban economy becomes clearer. It is also becoming clear that the model decreed by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) leads only to failure and that the authorities do not have the audacity or the capacity to improve our lives.

They spend hours and hours justifying themselves, going to great lengths to explain the evils that the done to them by the climate, by the proximity of their neighbor to the North, or by the international price of wheat flour, but they lack the courage to say what so many of us think: this system must be changed, dismantled and replaced by another that has fewer slogans and more realities. Nothing that is done within the laws and economic postulates of the PCC will be able to stop the nation’s fall into the abysses of misery and the irreversible deterioration of its infrastructure. continue reading

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 15 July 2023 — Yesmely Peña Rondón’s voice sounds broken and fearful over the phone. She is locked in a room with her sister, her mother and her nephew trying to stay alive despite the death threat they all received. Her crime: being the aunt of Rosmery Ponce Peña, 23, murdered on July 10 by her ex-partner in Güines, Mayabeque province. 

“He’s still on the run, they can’t find him,” Peña Rondón told 14ymedio about the alleged murderer, José Luis Domínguez Velázquez. The man, who seems to have coldly calculated the crime, waited until Ponce Peña was visiting a friend to shoot her in the head through a window. “She arrived at the hospital alive, but she was no longer conscious,” says the aunt.

“Now we are all in a room, alone, locked because he threatened to kill us,” details the woman who regrets not having received any police protection so far. In the vicinity of the Amistad sugar mill, the family fears that the young woman’s murderer will break into the house at any moment and shoot them. “Our house is isolated and people are afraid to visit us.”

The family reports that they do not know details of the weapon used to kill Ponce Peña, although they have heard rumors that it is a shotgun owned by Domínguez Velázquez. The day Rosmery Ponce Peña was murdered, her two-year-old boy “was not with her because he stayed with his grandmother. He has many problems, when he wants to attract attention he hits his head on the ground and doesn’t speak. We believe he is traumatized by the abuses he experienced with his father.” continue reading

“They are calling us from a number and when we pick up there is a man who laughs, he just laughs and does not say anything. We have reported it to the police but they do nothing,” she adds from the confinement to which they are forced by fear that the murderer will return for new victims.

Tired of the beatings and mistreatment, a few days ago the young woman decided to break off the relationship and called her family to get her out of the abuser’s house. Before they left there, José Luis Domínguez Velázquez issued a warning: “don’t worry, I’m going to kill you all.” The fateful prediction has begun to come true and the family fears that the murderer will complete it.

But before she was shot, Rosmery Ponce Peña dreamed of “rebuilding her life,” her aunt recalls. “She was looking for work, she hoped to work snack bar,” she details. She “wanted to focus on her son” despite the fact that the abuser had warned her that without him “she would never be happy.” The first thing that Domínguez Velázquez tried to kill was her hope and then he continued with her body.

The moment of separation was hard, says the aunt. “He didn’t want to give us anything, not even the child’s crib. The child is now sleeping on a mattress on the floor and we don’t even have our clothes,” recalls Peña Rondón. The alleged murderer lives four kilometers from the family home and “his whole life has been dedicated to doing [informal] business.”

His good relations with local police, about which he bragged about in public, heighten the family’s fears that he will get away with it. Several reports, compiled from relatives and neighbors, point to Domínguez Velázquez as a “snitch” who reported on what the residents of the area were doing.

“He was always surrounded by policemen who, in addition, did business with him. The guy was a door in two directions, he played being ‘one of the people, but we all knew that everything that was said in front of him ended up being known,” adds a resident of Güines who prefers anonymity. “He was always bragging and the worst thing is that he fulfilled part of his bragging.”

Domínguez Velázquez frequently beat his wife, according to family reports. “Every so often we had to go to their house, we filed a complaint for mistreatment but we had to withdraw it because he told us that if he went to jail he would only be in jail for one year and he was going to kill us when he got out,” recalls the aunt. .

The alleged murderer is also considered a person “with many resources.” Domínguez Velázquez, 49, “had the money in bags, we have also learned that he had a criminal record of robbery, rape and car accidents with deaths.” That economic solvency could help him leave the island. The family has heard rumors that he is preparing his escape through Mexico, but this suspicion has not been confirmed.

Before that fateful day, Rosmery Ponce Peña dreamed of giving her son what she never had. “She wanted to be happy because she could never be happy with that man, during the three years they were together. He didn’t even let her contact her family, he pushed them away,” denounces the aunt. “They met at a party in the park in the town. At first it seemed like it was good, but it turned out to be nothing good.”

Now, locked in a room with her relatives, Yesmely Peña Rondón insists that the attacker calculated everything: “It was a planned murder, he said it on several occasions and he fulfilled it, unfortunately he fulfilled it.”

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14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 10 July 2023 — If a couple of years ago her efforts were devoted to obtaining food, transportation, or perhaps planning to emigrate, now her greatest concern is the freedom of her relatives convicted for the protests of July 11, 2021 (11J). Prison has not only changed the detained on that historic day of popular demonstrations in Cuba, but also their loved ones.

Yaquelín Cruz García is no longer afraid to speak out. On July 15, her son Dariel Cruz García will be 22 years old. A day later, on the 16th, he will have spent two years behind bars after being arrested at his house in La Güinera, in Arroyo Naranjo (Havana). The young man was sentenced to five years for, among other things, allegedly launching “expletives against the leaders of the State and the Communist Party of Cuba.”

While the eldest of four brothers is in prison, the mother juggles to survive and help Dariel, known in the neighborhood as El Bolo . “Last month I couldn’t go visit him in prison because I didn’t have anything to take him,” Cruz García told 14ymedio . “I have three more children and it is very difficult for me to support everyone with a salary of 2,500 pesos a month.”

El Bolo is confined in the Jóvenes de Occidente [Western Youth] prison and his mother sees him as if he were still small: “My son is going through a lot of work, I hardly can help him. This month only one pound of sugar per person came to the bodega [ration store]. We have made an effort and we have saved the five pounds that we all received this month, so that he can keep them in prison.”

The unity of the relatives of political prisoners continues to be a challenge because the political police dynamite alliances, generate intrigues and also threaten them when they meet, but something is achieved, especially in La Güinera where the July 12, 2021 protests were one of the most intense of those days. continue reading